


Neither a Good Man nor a Bad One

by Griselda_Gimpel



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griselda_Gimpel/pseuds/Griselda_Gimpel
Summary: Pawel returns to Karse intent on bringing about peace between Karse and Valdemar.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Neither a Good Man nor a Bad One

In the end, Pawel went back to Karse. There was a great deal of debate on the matter. Some members of the council thought he should be sent back to Karse because he’d proved to be a traitor to Valdemar. ( _Pawel hadn’t ever sworn any oaths to Valdemar; he was just a member of the kitchen staff._ ) Others thought it was too dangerous to send Pawel back to Karse, given what he knew. ( _Pawel didn’t think he knew anything of value; he was just a member of the kitchen staff._ ) After a long talk with one of the priests of Vkandis in Valdemar, Pawel argued before King and Court and Council that he had an obligation to return to Karse, as he needed to tell the people there the truth about Valdemar. He said this under the stronger version of the truth-spell. The King, seeing that there was no deceit in his heart, gave his assent. Pawel was given an escort to the border, and then he was on his own.

He lasted as long as it took for him to ride to Sunhame, plus the time it took for him to set up a wooden soap box on the corner of the busiest intersection and get the words, “The priests are mistaken! Valdemar is not a land of demons! They are people just like us, and-” That was the point where he was arrested, pronounced a heretic, and burned alive. Pawel’s last thought before he died was, well, at least he’d told the truth.

\---

The afterlife that Pawel found himself in was a warm meadow with a stream running through it. To his dismay, there was a young boy in the meadow with him. That was a right shame. Pawel might have died before his time, but at least he wasn’t a child.

Pawel walked over to the boy and set a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, son,” he told him. He gave him a friendly smile. “We’re in the bosom of the Sunlord now.” Pawel looked around. He was sure the Sunlord had to be somewhere nearby. He glanced back down at the boy. “Well, I’m sure he’ll be along shortly.”

“How’d you die?” the boy asked.

“I was trying to bring about peace between Karse and Valdemar. Only did I didn’t do a very good job with it. But I died in His service, so I should rise to his feet.” Pawel glanced around again. Perhaps he _was_ at the Sunlord’s feet and simply hadn’t realized it, on account of the fact that he was very small and the Sunlord quite large.

“Do you regret what happened?” the boy asked.

Pawel nodded. “I don’t imagine I accomplished much. I didn’t go about it very smartly, thinking about it in hindsight.”

“Would you want to try again?” the boy asked.

“Yes,” said Pawel. He looked down at the boy to say that he’d asked the Sunlord if that would be possible when he met him, but as the Pawel looked down, the boy looked up, and there was something extraordinary about his eyes. The eyes captivated Pawel, and he felt his memories slipping away from him.

\---

The one-time Sun-lancer Clarrin saved 202 children from the Fires in Karse before he died. It was, in fact, in saving the 202nd child that he lost his life. He was in his guise as a scholar. The last child – a little girl with an untrained Fetching Gift - tread between a crevice on the path from Karse to Valdemar. It was quite a narrow crevice, and Clarrin stood solidly blocking it as the Sunsguard caught up with him. It was so narrow, in fact, that he was able to wedge himself in it, so that he’d stay upright even if he couldn’t do so under his own power. Then he told the girl to run and keep running until she was safely in Valdemar and to not turn back no matter what she heard. The first arrow hit him in the back as she took off at a desperate run. By the third arrow (which lodged itself in his shoulder) she was out of sight. The fourth, which hit him in the back of the neck, was the one that finally took his life.

\---

“Did she make it?” Clarrin asked urgently as he found himself in the afterlife.

“She did,” responded the Sunlord.

Clarrin recognized him this time, in part because he was difficult to look at straight on, as the Sunlord was in his Sun in Glory form, rather than his Child of the Morning form. As Clarrin look at his surroundings, memories came back to him. Not memories from the life he’d just led (he still had those memories), but additional memories from his previous life, when he’d been a man named Pawel.

“Did you succeed?” the Sunlord asked him.

Clarrin shook his head. “I wasn’t worthless, but the priests in Karse still preach hate against Valdemar. Would-” He swallowed hard. “-would it be all right if I tried again?”

“As many times as you need,” the Sunlord promised him.

\---

“Spit it out. I said, spit it out!” That was the Sunlord, although the defeated Son of the Sun was very disoriented.

“Ain’t my fault _your_ priests keep summoning me to eat the souls of the heretics. After they insist on enlarging me, I might add! And do they even ask if I like the taste of infidel? No! They just-”

“Do not try me, Talhkarsh.”

The defeated Son of the Sun heard a retching sound and then light poured over him. But he was shattered! His soul had been rendered and torn to pieces. He would never again walk in the light of the Sunlord!

“Quite a mess you are this time,” the Sunlord commented. Then the defeated Son felt himself being pulled as the different pieces of himself were rejoined by the Sunlord’s will.

“Sunlord,” the defeated Son said weakly. He was already on his knees, so he shifted to prostrate himself. The Sunlord looked like a man this time, except only to the extent that an eagle looks like a pigeon. There was a magnificence about him that defied words.

“No soul can be destroyed so thoroughly that its god can’t put it back together,” the Sunlord remarked, but the defeated Son’s memories were already returning from all the previous lives he’d led. He’d been Pawel and Clarrin and numerous others. Sometimes he’d been a man, sometimes a woman. He’d been priest and Healer and soldier and vagabond and everything in between.

“I failed again, Sunlord,” the defeated Son said. He’d come close this time. It had taken a Civil War in Karse to mark his defeat. Then he’d been captured and sentenced to have his soul eaten by a demon. He realized now this wasn’t the first time his life had ended that way. In fact, it wasn’t even the first time Talhkarsh had been the specific demon to eat his soul.

“Mind if I caper off?” Talhkarsh asked.

“Go in peace,” the Sunlord said, and Talhkarsh first shrank down to about six inches tall and then vanished in a puff of smoke.

The defeated Son stared at the grass in the meadow. A part of him felt utterly dejected, but the other part of him was going over the strategic decisions he had made, looking to see where he had erred. He had become a Son of the Sun by self-proclamation, challenging the authority of the one who ruled from Sunhame. He had preached to large crowds, certain that his words were inspired by the Sunlord.

“I didn’t have enough of the military on my side,” he said at last.

The Sunlord crouched down on the grass beside him and laid a warm hand on the defeated Son’s shoulder. “You don’t have to return,” he said gently. “You are welcome to say here in Paradise.”

“If I don’t go, will someone else bring about peace between your two lands?” the defeated Son asked.

“Perhaps,” the Sunlord responded.

“And perhaps not?”

“And perhaps it will take longer.”

“And more people will suffer?”

“So it goes.”

“Then I’d like to go back, if you’ll permit me.”

“As you wish.”

“Thank you, Sunlord.”

\---

Ever since Solaris was a little girl, she wanted to be a priestess. Her mother and father told her that neither she nor they were the ones who could make that decision, but Solaris was confident. She could feel a tug in her heart insisting that there was something she must do as surely as she could feel the sun’s warmth on her face.


End file.
